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Varian Wrynn continues to be a jerk April 14, 2009

I saw the new Ulduar trailer for World of Warcraft today.  It’s great, and provides a nice intro to the coming content patch (3.1, for those who are keeping track).  The setting of the Violet Tower in Dalaran was interesting. I’ve thought that Dalaran’s location was strange, considering the reason for their presence (Malygos, who is in Coldarra).  Now, it seems that their location is fortuitously close to Storm Peaks and Ulduar.

The thing that I noticed the most, however, was Varian Wrynn’s continued annoying animosity toward the Horde.  As a “member” of the Alliance, I consider the man an embarrassment.  I know that Blizz has a particular fondness for the Horde/Alliance duality: inner vs. outer “beauty”. And, the Humans are, in my opinion, the worst of the bunch.  However, Wrynn’s obvious prejudices are wearing thin on me. What a douche.

The Soul of a Toon April 9, 2009

I can’t believe I’m doing this. Blog Azeroth, a forum for World of Warcraft bloggers, has posted a new topic, Does your toon have a soul?

While I don’t “role play” my characters, I have given (most of them) back stories that reflect their “personalities”:

Bumpo (Night Elf Hunter):  Bumpo’s my original “main”, and the closest I have to “me” in the game.  He acts as the “big brother” to the rest of my characters. Back in the days when I played him all of the time, he had all the money.  My other characters would hit him up for loans whenever they had a big purchase.  He’s a steady guy and our guild master.

Aphrael (Night Elf Druid):  Aph is Bumpo’s baby sister and used to act the part.  Very quiet (almost shy), she however enjoys grouping up with others.  Back in the days when it was possible, she”d use her Druid abilities to switch up to whatever role her group needed: Tank, Healer or DPS.  Since WOTLK came out, she’s taken over as my main and has grown into a pretty good Tank.  While she’s zipped past her big brother in levels, she still looks to him for advice.

Überchik (Gnome Warlock):  Raise in a typical middle class suburban Gnome home, Uber refuses to reveal her original name, renaming herself when she finished her Warlock training.  She takes unholy delight in performing mayhem at any opportunity.  She’s an adrenalin junkie, constantly getting herself into huge trouble and then destroying her way out of it, laughing hysterically all the while.

Jezzbelle (Gnome Rogue):  Uber’s cousin, she shares Uber’s bloodthirstiness, but prefers the quit backstab to pyrotechnics.  She also excels at fishing, cooking, and alchemy.  She’s very self-reliant and spend a large chunk of her time sitting at a river bank and pulling up fish for her latest culinary creation.

Tanking revisited March 10, 2009

This past weekend, my guild got together for some Instance running (Old Hillsbrad and Black Morass).  As part of that, I was able to get some tanking practice during our first run of Old Hillsbrad.

I’ve got some practicing to do.

While I’m pretty good at holding aggro on the group, I definitely have to work on my ability to pull adds (additional enemies that come running in to help) and grab the guys that get “distracted” by other party members.  On a positive note, the Instances in the older Burning Crusade expansion seem to be perfect for this.  Both Old Hillsbrad and Black Morass are from that set and we were able to do those without too much fuss, a good opportunity for some practicing without getting the whole group killed off.

To Tank or not to Tank February 17, 2009

After WOTLK came out, I started leveling Aphrael, my Druid character, so that my guild would have another Tanking class available. My idea was that I wanted to run the 5-man leveling instances in Northrend. As it turns out, my guild is not geared to running instances.  Still, I’ve wanted to be running instances and at least seeing this content that I’ve been reading about.  In the meantime, I’ve leveled Aphrael up to 80, only running a single instance (Utgarde Keep).  However, I haven’t given up on my plan.

The question now is, would it be better to continue as a Tank (easy to practice) or switch to be a Healer. Switching Aphrael to spec in Restoration would make soloing difficult, so I’ve been holding off on the switch.  Additionally, I’ve tried healing with a lower level character and don’t particularly enjoy it.  Healers are basically out of the action, keeping the Tank and other characters alive.  It’s challenging, but not as much as Tanking or DPS’ing.  The next patch (3.1) is supposed to include dual speccing. I may just wait for that. Then, I can have both roles available to me. Until then, it would make sense to stick with my current talents.

All WoW, all the time February 13, 2009

With the release last November of the latest World of Warcraft expansion (Wrath of the Lich King), I’m spending a lot of leisure time playing the game. And, due to interactions with various guild mates, I’ve been spending more time thinking about my characters and how to improve them (we call this “theorycrafting”).  The upshot of this is that I’m once again wondering if I should start a WoW only blog, where I can just post my Wow musings and keep them out of the views of the rest of you who couldn’t give a fig about the game. Of course, this spreads across my other interests (politics, TV, Technology). I’m always worried that I’m not properly “entertaining” my “readership”.

Maybe I’m just worrying too much.

Stay tuned.

Back to basics November 4, 2008

Since the beginning of World of Warcraft, I’ve been a big solo player. While WoW is very solo-friendly, there are whole areas of content that I don’t get to experience (dungeon instances, raids, battlegrounds, and the Arenas). I still have no interest in PvP, which means that I’m not interested in the battlegrounds and Arenas. However, my interest in group play is growing, since the “end game” events in WoW are connected to these.

Unfortunately, solo-friendly characters (they generally fall into the DPS category) are a dime a dozen.  The characters in short supply are the Tanks and Healers. To facilitate grouping, one of my guild-mates and I have started new characters, dedicated to group play.  The plan is that this will be “appointment based grouping”: we’ll have set times to play, and the characters will be dedicated to this group. Since we’re short a full group (5 players), we’re filling the two hardest to fill slots, the Tank and the Healer.

We had our first session of play last night, getting Cobrah, my guild-mate’s Human Priest up to a common level.  It was a blast. I’ve tanked before with my Druid, but that was at higher level. I’m enjoying Tanking a lot more than previously; I think because at this level, we can work out tactics much easier than when in a group walking into a dungeon. Hopefully, by the time we’re ready for Deadmines, we’ll have a full system in place.

The craziest game event ever October 28, 2008

Over the weekend, Blizzard pulled out a wild event for World of Warcraft. As I’ve mentioned before, the next expansion (Wrath of the Lich King) is on its way to store shelves (release date November 13!).  As a prologue for this, Blizzard has initiated the Scourge Invasion.

It started out fairly mildly: Zombies were seen in the capitol cities wreaking a bit of havoc. It wasn’t too bad, members of the Argent Dawn society were there to defend the city and cure anyone infected with the dread Zombie disease.  These members warned that Arthas, the Lich King, was behind the incursion.

Every now and then, a player would succumb to the disease, and also be turned into a zombie. The first time that it happened to me, I didn’t even know what happened. Instantly, city guards attacked and killed me.

Things got worse. The Argent Dawn agents started disappearing.  The disease got worse, with shorter and shorter durations until players and non-players turned into zombies.  And these zombies began running in gangs, infecting others.

By Sunday night, it was so bad, that the main square of Stormwind City was wall to wall with dead bodies.  The city was a charnel house, eerily quiet. Players were avoiding the cities if at all possible, to keep from being infected. It felt like walking the streets of London during a medieval outbreak of the Plague.

Then, there was a gleam of hope. The Alliance and the Horde came together to work on a cure. Finally, Monday at noon, a cure was found.  I still see zombie bodies around every now and then, but the crisis seems to have passed.

This was the most amazing thing to experience. I give Blizzard great credit for doing something so dramatic in the game. It definitely hammered home the seriousness of events coming in the next expansion. I thought I was excited about it before; now that’s doubled!

Hello Northrend September 8, 2008

The entrance to Northrend from Menethil is pretty dramatic.  The entry is into an area called the Howling Fjord, which lives up to its name. Valgard, the Alliance city in the Howling Fjord, is under seige by a race of half-giants called the Vrykul. It’s similar to the entrance to the Outland in Burning Crusade, but in this battle, you’re thrust right into it. Your first quest is to jump in and help defend the town.

Later, there’s a series of quests that take you into the Vrykul’s new village, Wyrmskull. These quests are extremely action oriented. They remind me of Shattered Sun Offensive that was added to the Burning Crusade: lots of 24/7 action.

The artwork of Wrath of the Lich King (WOTLK) is very different from that of Burning Crusade (BC).  BC has a kind of fantasy-like look to it, very “otherworldly”.  In contrast, WOTLK is more “realistic”, and has the flavor of Norse mythology to me. It’s a nice change.

The buildings also are very different. In BC, the structures were all very simple. For instance, Inns were just a couple of rooms. The Inn at Valgarde has lots of floors, twists, and turns in it. It felt like a return to the original WoW, with more elaborate structures that provide a richer gaming experience.